Annotations tagged with Silver

This image also is conventional New Testament fare of Christ Expelling the Money-Changers from the Temple. At right, Jesus holds a whip to scourge the offending corrupters, dressed like contemporary German peasants, who retreat, cowering, with their goods, including lambs and doves used for temple sacrifices. Once more they move toward the left, against the grain of normal reading, to show their resistance as they are being driven away from their usual stand, now marked with an overturned table in the center foreground. Behind Jesus stands the row of apostles as witnesses, discussing his righteous anger. The texts are appropriate passages: John 2: 14-16, with commentary from Matthew 10:8 and Acts 8: 20 (“May your money be with you in perdition”).

Opposed to the humility of Christ, the pope also appears at the compositional center, frontal and at the top of the print. As usual by now in the series, he is flanked by clergy on either side. But he is presiding from above at a fully festive secular event, a joust between two heavily armored knights. Fifteen years earlier Cranach had already produced similar tournament woodcuts for his patron, Frederick the Wise, at the Saxon court.

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Before the pope a brocade is unfurled, and ladies watch from the upper left, while a brass choir plays trombones at the upper right. The German text below this image contradicts the Philippians text below Jesus, as it explicitly castigates the pope for such pleasure-seeking: “The pope thinks that his honor should not submit to humility.”

Works Cited

• Koepplin, Dieter, and Tilman Falk, eds. Lukas Cranach. Basel: Kunstmuseum, 1974.

The pope, wearing a more conventional royal crown in this scene, sits on an elaborate stepped throne beneath a luxurious, embroidered cloth of honor like a worldly king. He is attended by cardinals and bishops as well as monks, all arrayed in a row according to hierarchy. Before him in obeisance kneel the rulers of the Germanic world, headed by the emperor himself, wearing the arched crown (see Plate 1) as well as golden chains. A king or duke with a simpler crown kneels behind him , followed by humbler figures in contemporary urban bourgeois dress. All of them are situated below the feet of the pope, who blesses them from his elevated position of authority but also extends his own covered foot to be kissed by the emperor, who is thus deliberately humbled further.

Even compared to his earlier self-indulgent pleasures, this image of the pope’s court presents of his most luxurious activities. Seated in a large chamber under another baldachin and wearing his tiara, he gorges himself on food and drink as still more dishes are brought forth from the kitchen for him and his clerical guests at table. All of the trappings of aristocratic feasting accompany his meal: in the upper left a fool stands ready to provide entertainment, while in the immediate foreground a costumed group of musicians make music with lute, harp, and trombone, while a pair of well-dressed men with contemporary hats occupy the right corner (Normore 2015).

Works Cited

• Normore, Cristina. A Feast for the Eyes. Art, Performance and the Late Medieval Banquet. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2015.

The pope sits at an elevated throne, receiving a diverse clerical audience. In contrast to Jesus, he is crowned in comfort by a pair of mitred bishops. His luxurious robes and tiara represent a level of luxury instead of torment. Once more his worldly power is manifest by a view out the door at left, where an army actively fires cannons and muskets to defend his privilege.

In perhaps the most scathing indictment of papal militancy and arrogance, the pope with his triple-crowned tiara is shown coming out of his palace on an elaborately ornamented horse; as usual, he is accompanied by his entire entourage of cardinals and bishops, who also ride. They are all led by a pair of contemporary, armed foot soldiers with halberds, who turn a corner to reveal an ultimate destination of the pit of Hell, where tormented souls writhe among flames beneath hovering demons. Even the papal texts are scathing choices, emphasizing the kingly claims of a worldly Vatican: “The clergy are all kings, and the crown has been appointed to their head. The pope may ride equal to the emperor.”

Depicting the biblical verse (John 6: 15), in which Jesus retreats from his disciples in order to refuse a proffered crown of kingship, this scene unfolds with a cluster of figures in roughly contemporary sixteenth-century clothes, approaching from the right; they are juxtaposed against the retreating figure of Jesus, clad only in simple robes, who moves leftward away from them and into a dense forest setting at viewer left. The forest stands for his wilderness retreat, described in the text as a “mountain.” In sixteenth-century German imagery by artists such as Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Altdorfer, such undeveloped regions stand as equivalents for the non-civilized world, a refuge from habitation, often with a charged spiritual dimension (Silver 1983; Wood 1993).

The visual movement of the narrative from right to left adds an element of tension, because it runs against the grain of European reading habits in order to suggest resistance on the part of Jesus to such worldly kingship as well as his forceful retreat from his trusted followers.

The crown itself is modeled on the arched crown (Bügelkrone) of the Holy Roman Empire, worn by medieval emperors (Rosenthal 1970). Not only is this a contemporary and local Germanic reference, but it also implies a theological point about the separation of Church and state in accord with the famous biblical passage to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22: 15-22; Mark 12: 13-17) as well as the follow-up verse in John (18:36): “My kingdom is not of this world.” The walled castle on a promontory at the upper right behind the disciples suggests worldly wealth, status, and power, offered together with that crown.

Works Cited

• Silver, Larry. “Forest Primeval: Albrecht Altdorfer and the German Wilderness Landscape.” Simiolus 13 (1983): 5–43.
• Wood, Christopher. “Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape,” 128–202. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1993.
• Rosenthal, Earl. “Die ‘Reichskrone’, Die ‘Wiener Krone’, Und Die ‘Krone Karls Des Grossen’ Um 1520.” Jahrbuch Der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 66 (1970): 7–48.

Following the text of John 13: 4-16, Jesus kneels to wash the feet of his own apostles, inverting the normal hierarchy of holiness and authority in servitude and humility (literally close to the earth, humus). He is about to kiss the foot of his follower. The Gospel message (v. 16) underscores the body language provided in this visual lesson: “Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him.” In this more conventional image, the apostles are dressed like Jesus, wearing humble garments.

To viewers who are only familiar with the more tradition visual narratives of the New Testament, this scene must remain obscure. Before a walled city gate, where a solitary individual stands with an outstretched hand, holding a purse. Next to him an older disciple, presumably Peter (conventionally represented, as here, both bald and wearing a short white beard) stands near the center of the composition, holding a large fish. This is the scene (famously represented in the mid 1420s by Florentine painter Masaccio on a large fresco in Brancacci Chapel of the Church of the Discalced Carmelites) usually called the Tribute Money (Matthew 17: 24-27).

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In this scene, the required taxes for the temple are obtained through a miracle: a coin found in the mouth of a fish, newly hooked by the former fisherman, Peter. Jesus stands at the lower left corner, juxtaposed with the demanding tax-collector as he gestures with both hands, presumably enacting the miracle. The significance of this choice of subject had topicality for Luther and Cranach, because their religious movement had arisen out of protests against fund-raising by the pope in Rome through indulgences in order to pay for the extravagance of the construction of a grandiose, new St Peter’s church. Since the Lutheran church identifies with the apostles rather than with the pope, their indifference to such fees should free them from requirements to pay out for indulgences to fill Catholic coffers.

Works Cited

• Turner, A. Richard. Renaissance Florence. New York: Harry Abrams, 1997.

In this image Jesus once more appears in a wilderness, leaving a small copse of trees at the right edge for a mountain climb, en route to another spiritual retreat (see comment for Plate 1). He is accompanied by only a pair of disciples, foremost of whom is Peter, recognizable from his bald head and short white beard. His physical weakness emerges in the first passage, which mentions his weariness (John 4: 6), reinforced by the effort required to carry the cross (John 19: 17), which is also urged upon his followers (Matthew 16: 24). What is stressed here is spiritual effort and individual responsibility for his disciples to follow him.

At the right, within a massive portal that suggests the opening to an interior of a castle or palace structure, stands the pope, recognizable through his luxurious robes and triple-tiered tiara. He is backed not only by mitred bishops and cardinals in their distinctive hats but also by a powerful, contemporary army, complete with the latest weapons: halberds and pikes, accompanied by wheeled cannons. The military show of strength clearly denotes the territories and mercenary armies of the pope in Italy, most recently employed in assertive battles waged by Pope Julius II (r. 1503-13gffx). A chain across the portal shows the exclusive preserve or property defended by this pope and showing his worldly power. Approaching him from the left–in the normal direction of reading–is a cluster of nobles on horseback, led by a knight wearing the latest Germanic armor for himself and his mount (Pyrrh et al. 2005; (Terjanian 2011). Behind him rides a man wearing the fashionable jaunty hats popular at the Saxon court of Duke Frederick the Wise of Saxony.

Works Cited

• Pyrrh, Stuart, Donald LaRocca, and Dirk Brieding. The Armored Horse in Europe 1480-1620. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005.
• Terjanian, Pierre. Princely Armor in the Age of Dürer. Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 4. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2011.

Rather than the riches that one might expect as the counterpoint to Christ’s poverty on earth, this woodcut instead features the unseemly aggressive warrior element of the papacy. A fully contemporary German version of the military appears here in armor, with the full panoply of weapons: pikes and cannon as well as the traditional knightly cavalry. There is no visible marker of the pope himself, though a crowned commander figure in the lower left foreground wears a crown as he holds a halberd. In the background stands a massive castle compound, presumably to be put under siege for further conquest. If the papacy is to be identified here as the instigator of such inappropriate warfare for territorial gain, it stands guilty of worldly pride and avarice, defying the life and teaching of the Prince of Peace. The accompanying chosen texts appropriately emphasize righteous war and protection of property.

In contrast to the wilderness exterior of the left scene, this contrasting right scene by Cranach takes place within the palace walls of the Vatican, with a view outward through a door toward a full city, nestled beneath another castle. The pope in his tiara, surrounded by his entourage of clergy, points outward to the view as his proud possession. This image was surely sparked by the accompanying texts, since its meaning otherwise remains obscure. They reveal that the possession is in fact being bestowed on a loyal bishop, who stands with his mitre and robes beside the pope: “No bishop should be consecrated to a small city, but rather named and titled bishop of an honorable place.” Thus instead of shedding worldly goods and gains like the original apostles, the modern Church is guilty of simony and accumulation of lucrative benefices.

Once more Cranach’s New Testament image reprises a conventional subject: the Nativity in the ruined stable, with a background vignette of the angelic good tidings to the shepherds. Like all the other images from the Gospels, this one emphasizes the simplicity and humility of the holy figures, especially the swaddled Christ Child, who appears without a halo or any angelic entourage. These elements reinforce the poverty emphasized in the two unrelated Gospel text selections (Luke 9: 58; II Corinthians 8:9).

This pairing is one of the most rhetorically effective contrasts in the Passional. Both Jesus and the pope are mounted and head in opposite directions away from the central spine of the book. Jesus enters the portal of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, riding modestly on an ass and followed by his apostles on foot. His hand offers a blessing gesture, and the disciples remain united and isolated behind him, almost huddled together as a budding religious community. Behind them the background is shown as the same kind of rocky wilderness that has served as a site of spiritual retreat throughout the series. The texts appropriately underscore the humility of the event and the simple mount of a donkey from both Matthew 21:5 and also John 12:15.

In an unusual subject, where Jesus sends out the apostles to pursue their Christian mission, the apostles flank their Lord, who stands tall at the composition’s center, located again in the open wilderness of spiritual retreat. In the distant background stands an isolated mountaintop castle, evocative of the actual retreats of the Saxon dukes, sometimes depicted in the backgrounds of Cranach paintings, though not so specific in this case as to be identifiable (Müller 2009). Here Peter is singled out at the left foreground, looking down at a purse and discarded cloak, as if speaking the accompanying lines (Acts 3: 6), which refer to his preaching but also to his denial of riches, “Silver and gold I do not have [but what I do have I give you].” Added to the image in the Passional is a rhetorical question in a mixture of Latin and German, addressed to the current pope as successor of Peter, “Ubi is dann patrimonium Petri?” (where then is your patrimony, Peter?) So here the original preaching of the Word by the first among disciples is contrasted with the worldliness of the modern papacy of Luther’s day, which prizes wealth and luxury.

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The other text chosen (Matthew 10: 9-10) also emphasizes Jesus’s charge to his apostles to pursue acts of healing and ministry rather than luxury, “neither gold nor silver.” Significantly another purse lies on the ground in the right foreground beneath the other group of apostles, signifying their own self-denial in the cause of their mission.

Works Cited

• Müller, Matthias. “Architektonische Spurenlese in Einter Untergegangenen Residezlandschaft. Eine Annäherung an Die Brandenburgische Residenzarchitektur Des 16. Jahrhundets Und Ein Ausblick Auf Cranachs Gemalte Schlossdarstellungen.” edited by Elke Anna Werner, 99–109. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009.
• Partridge, Loren. The Art of Renaissance Rome. New York: Harry Abrams, 1996.
• Stinger, Charles. The Renaissance in Rome. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

This image of the pope opposite Jesus’s efforts negates that very effort, since the pontif is shown in an elaborate litter, carried by an entourage of six prelates within his expansive palace. His palanquin is shaded and adorned with another elaborate brocade, and his heraldic coat of arms with the crossed keys of St Peter appears beside the arched doorway that is his destination. Rather than bearing the cross as a lone individual, the pope instead is borne on the backs of his subjects, and instead of a spiritual retreat to mountain or forest, he seeks seclusion in his papal palace. The German text, citing the Latin chapter, si quis suadente and related texts, ironically proclaims how the pope takes up the cross unwillingly by putting his hand on the priest, cursing, and giving him the Devil.

The final pair of the Passional images most fully underscores the essential contrast between Jesus and the pope as well as their ultimate destinies. Like the Entry into Jerusalem pair (plates 17-18), the two protagonists head in opposite directions, but this time the axes are vertical and the destinations are Heaven versus Hell. On the left woodcut the Ascension of Christ appears, together with the Gospel text for that final event of Christ on earth (Acts 1: 9-11) and additional verses from Luke (1:33) and John (12: 26). The depiction by Cranach is conventional, even in its inclusion of the two remaining footprints of Jesus, left atop the Mount of Olives. Below the hillside at lower left stand the followers, both male and female, while in the sky above, flanking the triumphant figure of Christ, hover angelic attendants in clouds. Christ appears with a visible radiance around his head, not seen in previous woodcuts; this is the transfigured and immortal godhead rather than the earthly, suffering, mortal figure. He hovers in midair while holding the cruciform banner of his triumph over death itself.

In open countryside Jesus and the apostles stand across the landscape as a cluster of the sick and the lame with their crutches as well as the clacking noisemakers of lepers (at lower right) spread seated across the ground before them.

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Jesus stands in silent prayer in the center of the composition; his head also appears slightly higher than any of the other figures. Again the garments of the ordinary people, especially their hats, seem tied to Cranach’s contemporary world, while the robes of Jesus and the apostles display the timeless design common to the artist’s biblical imagery. While many healing passages of the Gospels could be cited, the text below Cranach’s woodcut cites Philippians 2: 6-8, which emphasizes the human aspects of Christ on earth and his humility, in keeping with the other imagery of the Passional.

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Works Cited

• Silver, Larry. Pieter Bruegel. New York: Abbeville, 2011.
• Tóth-Ubbens, Magdi. Verloren Beelden van Miserabele Bedelaars. Lochem: De Tijdstroom, 1987.
• Rosenberg, Charles. Rembrandt’s Religious Prints. Notre Dame: Snite Museum, 2017.

In contrast to Christ’s indifference to the taxation required for the temple, the pope was the instigator of the press for income to build St. Peter’s, so Cranach shows the facing image as his covetous use of indulgences to raise funds. Surrounded by his usual entourage of cardinals, bishops, friars, and monks, the pope sits high above the secular figures of the emperor in his arched crown and armor, facing inward from the lower left with another knight in armor beside him. Those Germanic figures are being dunned for money by a monk and a nun, who already hold a bag of coins, bestowed from the emperor by his armored associate; they are followed by a theologian in a doctor’s cap, or biretta. Meanwhile the outstretched right hand of the pope above holds an indulgence, solemnly certified with no fewer than three attached seals. It hovers over the head of the emperor and his adjacent knight, but it also gives off pestilence in the form of lightning bolts and hail, much as late medieval woodcuts of witches showed them brewing up storms descending from clouds as a punishment. Thus does Cranach show the papal indulgences as an evil scourge, by implication equating the pope with the evil malevolence associated with witches (and anticipating the final image of the Passional, where the pope descends into Hell).

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Works Cited

• Brinkmann, Bodo. Witches’ Lust and the Fall of Man. The Strange Fantasies of Hans Baldung Grien. Frankfurt: Staedel Museum, 2007.
• Nuechterlein, Jeanne. Translating Nature into Art. Holbein, the Reformation, and Renaissance Rhetoric. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2011.
• Dykema, Roberta. Luther, Cranach, and the Passional Christi Und Antichristi. Saarbrücken: Lambert, 2017.

This image is perhaps the most scandalous of the Cranach woodcuts, because for the first time in Lutheran imagery, the pope is explicitly equated with the legendary Antichrist, cast down into Hell by a host of inventive demons. These evil beings resemble the hybrid creatures invented during this period by numerous artists, most notoriously by Hieronymus Bosch for his Hell scenes and images of the devilish torments of saints (Silver 2006). The pope is still wearing his tiara and his luxurious robes as he falls through the air. Underneath him at the bottom of the image figures of tormented souls appear as heads emerging from their surrounding flames of eternal punishment. Cranach had already anticipated this outcome in his image of the Pope on horseback behind infantry soldiers (Plate 18). The associated text from Revelation (19) describes how the apocalyptic beast was captured together with his “false prophet who worked signs in his presence,” here deemed to be the pope. Their final punishment will be meted out by the Lord “with the brightness of his coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

Works Cited

• Silver, Larry. Hieronymus Bosch. New York: Abbeville, 2006.

As an obvious contrast to the elimination of money’s corruption from the temple, Cranach shows the enthroned pope in his tiara, accompanied by clergy and sitting in a church, whose altar is visible in the right background. He presides on high while dispensing signed indulgences. His own comfort is underscored by the presence of a cushion at his elevated seat and another baldachin above his head. The pope holds an indulgence that he has just signed, while he passes another, with numerous attached seals (akin to the document on plate 8), which is transmitted in turn by a tonsured monk, who receives payment for it from a peasant woman in contemporary dress. Below the pope the remaining group of peasants stands behind a table piled high with further sheets, not yet affixed with seals or signatures; also on the table sit piles and rows of coins, to which the foremost peasant, in the lower right corner, adds from the sack that he carries. Here, then, the condemnation of contemporary indulgences by Luther is made explicit.

Here Cranach presents a conventional image of the Passion, representing the Crowning with Thorns (John 19: 2) within a claustrophobic, closed space, in which Jesus is assailed by tormentors, who gesticulate wildly while his own hands are tied. Their grotesque features indicate their evil natures, a commonplace contrast to the passive suffering of Christ in German Passion iconography. Here, as elsewhere, such images of the tormentors often use anti-Semitic caricatures to represent Jews expressly as the enemies of Christ.

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Works Cited

• Marrow, James. Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979.
• Trachtenberg, Joshua. The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983.
• Mellinkoff, Ruth. Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
• Schreckenberg, Heinz. The Jews in Christian Art. New York: Continuum, 1996.
• Merback, Mitchell, ed. Beyond the Yellow Badge: New Approaches to Anti-Semitism in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
• Obermann, Heiko. The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.
• Merback, Mitchell. The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel. Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1998.

Jesus is preaching with speaking gestures under a tree at right within the wilderness, as the apostles look on opposite him. The associated text emphasizes his sermonizing (Luke 4: 43-44). Seated at his feet on the lower left within his audience are several prominent mothers with children, a favorite subject by Cranach in his later Lutheran paintings (Matthew 19: 13-15).

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Within the framework of the emerging Lutheran theology this theme had a strong evangelical value: for one, it reinforced the principle of infant baptism, already a contested debate among Reformers; but it also had the value of emphasizing the doctrine of sola fide, where the innocent trust of children could be likened to the faith required of Christian true believers.

Works Cited

• Christensen, Carl. Art and the Reformation in Germany. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1979.
• Brinkmann, Bodo. Witches’ Lust and the Fall of Man. The Strange Fantasies of Hans Baldung Grien. Frankfurt: Staedel Museum, 2007.
• Brinkmann, Bodo, and Stephan Kemperdick. Deutsche Gemälde Im Städel 1500-1550. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2005.

The theme of Jesus’s spiritual independence of authority is underscored in this visual dialogue, interpretable as a confrontation with Pharisees standing opposite. He wears the same nondescript robes and stands bareheaded, while they wear hats and hoods; one of them washes his hands ostentatiously in a ritual cleansing. Behind them at left the apostles, marked with halos, are already seated at table, suggesting the convergence of events on the eve of the Last Supper, a time when the Pharisees looked forward to the upcoming arrest of Jesus. The text provides the proper context for understanding these figures, staking out a vivid contrast between the Old Law and the upcoming new era of Grace, an image that would be concretized by Lucas Cranach in paintings and prints at the end of this same decade ¹.

Using Luke 17: 20-21, it asserts, as Jesus told the Pharisees, that “The kingdom of God cometh not with outward show. . . . For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.” For Luther, the Catholic Church was still linked to the idea of the Law, because he condemned their doctrine of the value toward salvation of good works. This view is confirmed in the second text, Matthew 15: 9, “And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

Works Cited

• Christensen, Carl. Art and the Reformation in Germany. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1979.
• Hofmann, Werner, ed. Luther Und Die Folgen Für Die Kunst. Hamburg: Kunsthalle, 1983.
• Scribner, R. W. For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
• Noble, Bonnie. Lucas Cranach the Elder: Art and Devotion of the German Reformation. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009.
• Perlove, Shelley, and Larry Silver. Rembrandt’s Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2009.

The corresponding image of the pope shows him seated and enthroned, wearing his tiara while he blesses a facing audience of his clergy, ranging from monks and nuns, who kneel, to mitred bishops, who stand. To a Lutheran community that is develop-ing a doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, this religious hierarchy, founded on a tradition of the sacrament of ordination of priests, is anathema–utterly opposed to the haloed apostles at table in the opposite print. Here the text, composed expressly for this image, actually mentions the kingdom of Antichrist, “complete in outward nature,” and it condemns papal appointments, ordinations, and adornments in the voice of Luther. Finally, it evokes Timothy 4: 1-3, St. Paul on the endtimes, when “some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.”